Sponsored by the nonprofit Common Ground, they named their effort FreeIT Athens and went to work on computers donated from local businesses. The finished product would go to other nonprofit agencies or individuals who donated $25 or agreed to pay back with 12 hours of volunteer work.

"They wanted to do something to promote technology and to show people how it wasn't this cold, soulless job, that you could make an impact on the lives of real people," said Brian Pitts, a FreeIT Athens volunteer.

Today, FreeIT Athens has a network of nearly 50 volunteers who meet twice a week to wipe hard drives and load software to make old computers run almost like new machines. To date, hundreds of people have used a FreeIt computer either at home or in a community lab.

Semmy Purewal, one of the founders, got the idea for FreeIT Athens while he was volunteering in a similar recycling program that BikeAthens runs to fix up used bikes.

That first year, the group repaired 30 computers, but today has fixed more than 1,500.

"It's become such a huge force in Athens," Purewal said. "I'm just shocked by how many people are bringing in computers."

In 2008, the group partnered with the Clarke County School District, as administrators began replacing old computers. Instead of throwing the computers away or selling them to a recycler, school officials turned over a mountain of old computers to FreeIT Athens.

"When the school district got involved, we got to operate on a scale we hadn't done before," Pitts said. "Suddenly, with the school district, they were offering us 100 computers to work on, when in the past maybe we had a few dozen computers and that would have been a big accomplishment."

FreeIT Athens has restored 1,100 school district computers and hundreds of others, some of which went to needy people who completed a computer training class. Others went into computer labs at community centers at Nellie B and Jack R. Wells public housing complexes, as well as Bethel Homes. Some of the machines help students in after-school programs, like the one run by the Athens Tutorial Program, which received a set of computers in August.

To make sure people understand how best to use the computer, the school district this year has required parents and their kids to attend Family Academy meetings, where they learn technology, along with more traditional life and job skills training.

"We've put a much higher emphasis on training than we've done before," Pitts said. "Now, it's not just an initial class, but we do follow-up classes, which has led us to recruit a whole new group of volunteers that can help with training and build relationships with other groups in town and those individuals who received a computer."

The classes also have helped parents keep closer contact with teachers through e-mail, said Greg Davis, a Career Technical Instruction coordinator at Clarke Central High School who helped establish the partnership with FreeIT Athens.

"It's more strategic," Davis said. "We're trying to use the laptops and the computers as carrots so that families will have an extra incentive to do the things that will benefit them and their children in the long run. We still have a surplus of computers left, but we're trying to use them in a way that will have a big bang for the buck, so we're throwing in other things."

Though residents can come to the community centers to log onto the Internet, having wireless access at home would be ideal, and is something the nonprofit has explored with the Athens Housing Authority.

"That's the road we're trying to go down now," Pitts said. "I think there's consensus in the group we need to grow in that direction. Giving residents who are in poverty computers helps them accomplish a lot of skills, and the impact is magnified if they don't just have a computer in their home, but also having online services in their home. So many aspects of our lives are done online now, so really getting people better Internet access at the lowest cost possible is certainly something we'd like to work on."

FreeIT Athens members are looking for grants to expand wireless into poor neighborhoods through programs like the federal Promise Neighborhoods Grant that Family Connection/Communities-in-Schools of Athens is seeking through the Whatever-it-Takes Initiative.

Free IT Athens operates out of the ACTION, Inc. building at 594 Oconee St. and holds open hours for the public from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday and from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays.